CALLOT, Jacques

Callot achieved his greatest success in engraving those public festivities with which the Grand Dukes sometimes amused the people of Florence; he found the brilliant idiom for rendering the action of those taking part. There are hundreds of people in this huge plate, and Callot displays great skill in forcing them into a coherent pattern.

Callot’s technique in etching is highly personal. He found the current soft varnish inadequate to the delicacy which he sought and replaced it by the hard varnish employed by lute-makers, a habit in which etchers have followed him to the present day.

This print depicts the first interlude of the Liberation of Tyrrhenus and Arnea performed in the medici Theater. This performance was designed by Giulio Parigi and performed during Carnival of February 6, 1617.

In addition to the commissioned etchings, Callot made drawings and etchings of landscape for its own sake. These works follow the Mannerist tradition as it had developed in the Low Countries from the inventions of Bruegel, whose engraved landscapes Callot must certainly have known. The convention is fairly rigid and can be seen in this illustration: a dark tree in the very foreground, the recession based on an alternation of light and dark passages, arranged in wings as on a stage, aided by an exaggerated perspective established either by the sharply converging lines of buildings or the sudden diminution in the scale of the figures.

The last four years of Callot’s life were marked by Richelieu’s invasion of Lorraine in 1633, the capture of Nancy and the ignominious surrender of the Duke. Callot’s reaction is to be seen in his last great work, the Grandes Mis�res de la Guerre, executed in 1633. It has frequently been pointed out that these etchings must not be connected too closely with the actual campaign in Lorraine, the Grandes Mis�res may be regarded as a precipitation of the artist’s general feelings about war, brought to a head by the invasion of Lorraine.

In the manner of presentation Callot brings all his previous experiments to bear on intensifying the horror of the story which he has to tell. In the etching in which the bandits are hanged, the traditional dark tree in the foreground is replaced by a group of the priest giving absolution to a man about to join the row of gallows-birds in the centre of the composition. The tree from which they hang is isolated in the middle of a wide circle of soldiers, reduced by distance to minute scale. On the figures of the hanged men Callot has expended as much observation and as much finesse as in all his sketches of the courtiers of Florence.

In less than two decades, Callot progressed from depictions of strange semifantastic figures - theatrical stock characters - to complex large-scale compositions on small etching plates. The present drawing is a sketch for an etching.

In addition to the commissioned etchings, Callot made drawings and etchings of landscape for its own sake. The Agony in the Garden shows his feeling for the rendering of natural scenery, though here it is used as a setting for a religious subject; but there are many dozens of drawings and etchings executed by Callot at Nancy in which the landscape is the real theme.

Callot, adventurous from his youth, carried his daring and curiosity into his craft and is responsible for inventive brilliance in the preparation of his etched plates. He was born in Nancy, France; his family planned a life for him in the Church. However, he ran away from home on two occasions while still a youth. The first time (1604) he met a band of gypsies and traveled with them to Florence. His memory of this escapade resulted in a group of etchings done in later years. From Florence he traveled to Rome, where he was recognized by merchants from his home town, and compelled to return to Nancy. A second attempt to escape was successful only as far as Turin, where an older brother found him. About 1608, the family finally accepted defeat and permitted him to leave for Rome to study art.

Callot studied in both Rome and Florence under various masters, and learned the craft of etching. But he soon outstripped his teachers and in the course of his lifetime produced some thousand plates, along with over fourteen hundred drawings, which have influenced and inspired many artists since his day. There were many imitators, but Callot’s prodigious accomplishment remains unequaled.

Typical of Callot’s genius is this view of a battle, in which the vantage point of the artist seems far removed from the field of action. The horsemen in the left foreground are clearly depicted, and as the action recedes into the distance, mere scratches on the plate become, by some miracle of craftsmanship, footmen and cavalry engaged in fierce action. With incredible patience Callot draws a walled town at the right, delineates other small towns perched on huge rocks, and creates plains, mountains, and rivers that move into the far distance. It has been estimated that Callot crowded a thousand figures into compositions of this size. In this magic of suggestion he remains unsurpassed.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 12 minutes):

Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber: The Battle, suite

The subject matter of Callot’s etchings was extremely varied; in a host of tiny compositions, he represented vagabonds and dwarfs, and characters from the commedia dell’ arte. He did two series of the Miseries of War, one large and one small, as well as views of cities and representations of elaborate pageants and fêtes. His Caprices have a spirit more like that of Tiepolo, unlike the moody aquatints of Goya. In the preparation of this series of fifty plates, Callot used a hard-ground varnish in place of the softer variety. He also mastered the technique of immersing the plate in acid a second time to create more deeply bitten lines. Callot visited France, worked on a series of plates illustrating the siege of La Rochelle for Louis XIII, and in 1629 created View of the Louvre, View of the Pont-Neuf; and Tour de Nesle, memorable records of seventeenth-century Paris.

The Holy Family at Table is not typical of Callot’s general style or subject matter; rather, it indicates his desire to experiment with new effects. The composition here is circular; in another print executed the same year (The Card Players) he employs an oval format. The nocturnal scene is made dramatic by the lighting, the table illuminated by a candle and the heads of the three figures brightened by the radiant halos of the Christ Child and the Madonna. It has been suggested that the inspiration for this handling of the subject came from the impressive night scenes of Georges de La Tour.

Callot achieved his greatest success in engraving those public festivities with which the Grand Dukes sometimes amused the people of Florence; he found the brilliant idiom for rendering the action of those taking part. The idiom can be seen applied to a slightly different subject in the background of the etching of the Two Pantaloons. In this case the people represented are not the members of a pageant, but the ladies and gentlemen of Florence out walking. In the sophisticated Medici Court, however, the borderline between festa and daily life was very vague, and here the courtiers are behaving almost as if they were taking part in a ballet. It is this swaggering, dance-like action that Callot renders with such vividness, adopting for the figures poses which go back to Late Gothic models. But affected though their movements are, Callous figures are based on close and witty observation; they combine artificiality with naturalism in a manner only excelled by Watteau.